


they found a steeple and tore up the wood

by somethingdifferent



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-02 15:11:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2816714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingdifferent/pseuds/somethingdifferent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she was very young (if she was ever very young) her mother used to tell her fairy tales. In them, everything always ended well: good people got what they deserved, and bad people got what they deserved. She should have known. Even then.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they found a steeple and tore up the wood

_Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understanding their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened._  

 

 _There was a flood, a world of water  
_ _The Mason's wife swam for her daughter  
_ _One thousand people did what they could  
_ _They found a steeple and tore up the wood  
_ _Five hundred pieces means five hundred float  
_ _One thousand people means five hundred don't_

 

 

 

 

:

 

 

 

 

It is the way of all of history, she knows; certain things, once lost, cannot be retrieved.

 

 

 

 

:

 

 

 

 

She was too young, as they all are. By nineteen she was working on minor procedures, by twenty-two she was operating as the lead surgeon, and though this had a little to do with her natural penchant for anatomical structures it was mostly a result of the constant sense of dread hanging over them, dread like the blade of a guillotine. By Abby's generation, everything of importance was done faster - if only for fear that it might not be done at all.

She supposed she was lucky, marrying Jake at twenty-three, after knowing him a year; it wasn't uncommon, in those days, to meet someone at eighteen and be wed by the next month. Then the forty or fifty years of misery, maybe more (life expectancy had dramatically decreased compared to what it was on the ground), ended only by a body, living or dead, willing or otherwise, floating from the ship.

There were the times she wished for something else - wondered about another life she might have lived - but these small fantasies never lasted very long. She disliked delving into hypotheticals, disliked allowing herself to acknowledge any flaws, any emptiness in her life. Marcus always had that sentiment correct, at least: thoughts have a certain degree of usefulness.

 

 

 

 

:

 

 

 

 

The first thing he said to her after her husband died (after he was killed, after he was executed, after he was murdered by her hand) was _I'm sorry_. She remembered it for no reason other than how jarring it was, how inconsistent with what she knew about Kane. How odd, she thought, that he would apologize for doing his job. He never had before.

 _It's okay_ , she had replied instinctively. Her husband dead, her daughter broken, her hands shaking, and him, there, solid and silent, watching her come undone and then put herself back together, piece by piece. It wasn't okay, she thought later, only later. It really wasn't.

 

 

 

 

:

 

 

 

 

 _They'_ _re too young_ , she had argued once, in vain.

 _They are always too young_ , he had replied, and, for a moment, he seemed so utterly exhausted that she had to look away.

 

 

 

 

:

 

 

 

 

People were allotted certain things aboard the ship, things they might have been entitled to had there been more resources to go around, had they been living in another place, had they been leading other lives. More food, more space, more air, more blood. Abby watched too many people die on the table, her hands tied by regulation. Each body drained, each viable organ extracted, and then the corpse released into the void of space. The chrome surface sterilized, and the process repeated.

 _Dissent_ , they told the Guard during basic training, _is death_.

They never mentioned that it was the same for acquiescence.

 

 

 

 

:

 

 

 

 

They lose things on the way to the ground. People, equipment, weapons, food, medicine, memories, facts, figures, books, artwork, poetry, names and dates, entire histories. Each burnt alive in the atmosphere, left aboard the ship, in pieces on the unforgiving earth. Never to be recovered. Never to be remembered.

(During the first few meetings she attended as a councillor, she was struck by the fact that despite the terrible things Kane suggested, despite the evil things he insisted they must do, he was never cruel about it. Only callous and cold. Only ever rational. And always without remorse.)

Next to her, Marcus holds his head in his hands.

 

 

 

 

:

 

 

 

 

 _There's no point in imagining an alternative,_ he says, his voice hoarse, his skin caked in dirt and blood, not all of it his own. _Between these two visions of reality only one is viable. Only one will keep us alive._

(That's what it comes down to, in the end. She always knew this about Kane, even back then. Alive or dead. Here or there. It was always about the best possible outcome, and she thinks of a book she read, once, in the library on the ship. All of it lost now, she supposes, all of it gone.  _Better never means better for everyone._

 _It always means worse, for some._ )

 

 

 

 

:

 

 

 

 

 _I'm sorry,_ he says for the thousandth time.

As if one more might do the trick.

 

 

 

 

:

 

 

 

 

Abby doesn't deal in hypotheticals. It was the only advice Marcus ever gave her that she immediately accepted, that she knew immediately to be true. She learned long ago to ignore the uncertainties that stained her marriage, the twinge of empathy toward patients dying in front of her, the doubt of her own abilities as a leader, and desire - any of it - heavy and unmovable as lead in the pit of her stomach.

She used to imagine her life as it might have been on earth: how she would have become a doctor when she was ready, how she would have had space enough for herself and her family, how her mother and father would have lived, how she would have had time to get to know Jake, really know him, how Clarke might have been an artist, how they would have been happy. And it's only once that she ever considers how other people might have had the same passing thoughts - that Thelonious might have imagined a world where he did not need to choose between life and death, that Jake might have imagined a world where he could uphold his morals as he saw fit and not paid the price with his life, that even Marcus might have imagined a world where he did not need to be so pragmatic, so utilitarian, where he could have chosen the few over the many and not, in doing so, condemned hundreds to die.

(Here, now, Abby imagines how her life might have been on the Ark. If Jake had lived, if nothing had been wrong, if everything had stayed the same. She can never decide if this way was the better choice after all.)

 

 

 

 

:

 

 

 

 

When she was very young (if she was ever very young) her mother used to tell her fairy tales. In them, everything always ended well: good people got what they deserved, and bad people got what they deserved. She should have known. Even then.

That's what it comes down to - good or bad, right or wrong, dead or alive - it was never a question of  _deserving_. Things end, and people end with them. There was never any way around it.

 

 

 

 

:

 

 

 

 

He kissed her only once on the ship. _If we're going to die,_ he said, tugging at the end of her braid before tilting his head and pressing his lips to hers, just barely. It was a small thing, small enough to forget about altogether. Leave it as it was. Pretend it never happened.

And so they did.

 

 

 

 

:

 

 

 

 

 _If we're going to die,_ he says once, and flinches.

(She pulls him to her by the nape of his neck.)

 

 

 

 

:

 

 

 

 

In a fairer world, she imagines sometimes, her husband would have lived, Clarke would have stayed, and Abby wouldn't have had to make the choice that ruined everything she ever worked for. And then, conversely, in a fairer world, Thelonious wouldn't have made it to the ground at all, the boy, Bellamy, would have been jailed at best, executed at worst, and Marcus would have died a long time ago. Abby doesn't like to deal in hypotheticals, but even she knows this.

It was never a question of _deserving_.

Sometimes it's better that way.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I could probably write essays about my thoughts on Abby Griffin and Marcus Kane and their moral ambiguity, but instead I wrote a fic.
> 
> First quote and the quote in the text are both by Margaret Atwood (idk I just think Abby would love Margaret Atwood???) from _Cat's Eye_ and _The Handmaid's Tale,_ respectively. The second quote is from "All Fires" by Swan Lake.


End file.
